Do not throw this
letter into the fire; be so kind as to read it through. Perhaps
you may pardon the opening sentence when you see that it is no
commonplace, selfish declaration, but that it expresses a simple
fact. Perhaps you may feel moved, because I ask for so little, by
the submission of one who feels himself so much beneath you, by
the influence that your decision will exercise upon my life. At my
age, madame, I only know how to love, I am utterly ignorant of
ways of attracting and winning a woman's love, but in my own heart
I know raptures of adoration of her. I am irresistibly drawn to
you by the great happiness that I feel through you; my thoughts
turn to you with the selfish instinct which bids us draw nearer to
the fire of life when we find it. I do not imagine that I am
worthy of you; it seems impossible that I, young, ignorant, and
shy, could bring you one-thousandth part of the happiness that I
drink in at the sound of your voice and the sight of you. For me
you are the only woman in the world. I cannot imagine life without
you, so I have made up my mind to leave France, and to risk my
life till I lose it in some desperate enterprise, in the Indies,
in Africa, I care not where. How can I quell a love that knows no
limits save by opposing to it something as infinite? Yet, if you
will allow me to hope, not to be yours, but to win your
friendship, I will stay.
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